A Japanese Television Cooking Show - Iron Chef Battle

Iron Chef Battle is an originally a Japanese television cooking show produced by Fuji TV. It is a cooking battle between the guest chef and the shows resident Iron Chef in a cooking battle that is timed and is designed around specific dish and ingredients. This program had more popularity and worked better than the game shows.

As popular as it is in Japan it did not take long for the Americans to make it one of the favorite programs watched across the United States. Initially Iron Chef Battle program was picked up by Food network and dubbed in English. Whatever the reason the dubbed version of this program was watched more by the American and to an extent gave rise to the trend of Dubbed Kung Fu Movies as well.

On every show a challenger is picked and pitted against one of the Iron Chefs. The challenger may be from Japan or from elsewhere. The match ups are determined well before especially the ones from Japan are picked because of rivalry with one of the Iron Chef. The earlier version was where the challengers would compete against each other before they would get the opportunity to face the Iron Chef for a 90 minute competition.

If the challenger wins twice then they were given the title of ´Honorary Iron Chef´ but this entire version was scraped. The later version comprised of a competition between challengers where they were given one hour to cook and improvise a multi course meal around the chosen theme ingredient of the day. These dishes were then judged by a panel to determine which chef did best justice to the ingredients provided. Each contestant was also given two assistants. And of course a host who gives the updates and commentary for everything that is going on in the show.

Around Christmas 2001 the U.S UPN network presented two one hour episodes of the Iron Chef USA which was hosted by William Shanter. However it was rather unsuccessful due to a lot of miss coordination. It was only in 2004 that the Iron Chef Battle America show hit it off with a bang.